Google founder Sergey Brin to fund Parkinson's gene study

The billionaire founder of Google, Sergey Brin, has announced he will
contribute money and his DNA to a study into the genetic underpinnings of
Parkinson’s disease.

The study will be conducted by 23andMe, a company co-founded and co-managed by Mr Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki.

The company hopes to recruit 10,000 people with Parkinson’s disease for the study, according to the New York Times. Mr Brin, 35, will be one of the control participants.

He revealed last year that he had a genetic mutation that sharply raised his risk for developing Parkinson’s. His mother already has the disease.

“I kind of give myself 50-50 odds of getting Parkinson’s in 20 or so years, 25 years,” Mr Brin said in an interview. “But I also give it a 50-50 shot of medicine catching up to be able to deal with it.”

Mr Brin, who will pay the bulk of the study’s costs, declined to say how much money he would donate or how much the research would cost.

Parkinson’s is a neurological disease that interferes with movement, speech and other functions.

By comparing the DNA of the patients and the controls at 600,000 spots across the genome, researchers hope to find genetic variations, beyond those already known, that are linked to the disease.